The Best! Taco! Ever! (Austin, Texas)

Subtitle:Five Reasons I Don’t Want to Tell you About the Best Taco Ever

1) FoodLibsTM: The Easy Form to Create Every Mediocre Yelp Posting Ever: I ate the best taco (foodstuff). I have eaten a gajillion (really big number) tacos (same foodstuffs), including in Mexico (exotic country) in my life and this was definitely the best one. It was so amazing (adjective) that I was mind-blown (adjective).

2) Finding the best of any kind of food is like a pyramid. Nobody sits back after a really great barbacoa taco and says “Yup. That’s it. The greatest meat shoved in tortilla on earth. I can die a happy woman now.” No, it just offers a higher bar for future tacos. Every taco from here on out is judged against that one: is the tortilla as supple, is the meat as flavorful, are the toppings as fresh? Life becomes a constant search for the Holy Grail: an even better taco. The only way to fuel the fire is to keep finding better and better tacos. As a food blogger, this makes me the Pharoah of edible superlatives. I’ll be going by Tutenkharnitas.

3) Just by mentioning (whispers)Best Taco Ever I’ve awoken a special type of Internet troll. This species has not only eaten the taco I enjoyed, but also seventeen other tacos of the same type/in the same city that are so much better. This troll will crawl out of his/her cave shortly and inform me that I’ve never even eaten a real taco in my life and should probably just go back to doing tastings of rainwater or whatever it is we Seattleites have in spades up here.

4) Best Taco Ever comes from a place called El Taco Rico. “Rico,” as I have come to call it, as we are now on a first name basis, has erratic hours. It’s not central. It’s kind of a pain in the rear. I tried to go three times on my weekend in Austin and succeeded only once. Rico is a cruel mistress. If I send taco-crazed hordes to see Rico, and it’s closed, what if they turn their fiery rage on me? I envision the pig blood scene from Carrie, re-enacted with salsa. What if the proprietress elopes with a handsome stranger whom I sent for excellent tacos, and now her little brother works there making sub-par tacos. Internet taco lovers, you would judge me for sending you to those inferior tacos, I know it.

5) I really don’t want to have to wait in a long line with all of you riff-raff when I’m next in Austin, just to get my hands on that taco.

In order to prevent that from happening, I now offer you five more great tacos to eat in Austin that are NOT the Best Taco Ever but are pretty damn good. (Click for a larger photo).

Taco More Barbacoa taco, accompanied by the most perfect, hangover-curing consomme (not pictured).